MuckRock’s #FOIAFriday webinar series continued last Friday with a step-by-step guide on how to request data inventories from federal and state agencies.

But first: what is a data inventory? Essentially, it is a dataset that lists all the data held by an agency.

This seems almost too good to be true: if an agency keeps a list of all the data they collect, a requester doesn’t have to dig much to know what to request. What about all the fun mucking around to figure out what documents or data your government has?

Thanks in part to an executive order titled, “Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information,” requesters can sometimes save the mucking for after they get the data. Following that order, the Office of Management and Budget required federal agencies to maintain a data inventory.

But even before the age of data and ubiquitous spreadsheets, public agencies like police departments kept a list of all the forms they used. States have also changed their open data laws. In Minnesota, the Department of Administration requires government entities to “create a document that identifies and describes any private or confidential data maintained by the entity,” which can be seen in action in Minneapolis’ city data inventory.

In California, the Department of Technology announced their new Open Data Policy in 2019, which “provides guidelines to identify, review, prioritize and prepare publishable data for access by the public and government entities via an open data portal or open data site.”

Friday’s session included live filing for data inventories from NASA and California’s Department of Justice.

Watch the session on data inventories below and register for June’s session here.

The Update

• West Virginia agency denies newsroom’s public records request: The West Virginia Department of Human Services failed to give more than five months of financial documents related to temporary housing for foster children, reports Amelia Knisely in the West Virginia Watch. The Department of Human Services rejected the newsroom’s request for documents, in a response that one West Virginia delegate called either “incompetent or they’re lying.”

• Washington state transparency rankings: The Washington Coalition for Open Government released its “Winners & Sinners” list, ranking state and local agencies by average time taken to complete public records requests over a five-year period.

• New Jersey bill aims to alter state’s public records law: The New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists sent a letter to New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and state lawmakers, urging them to reject a new bill that would make substantial changes to the state’s Open Public Records Act. The organization says the bill would “further [shroud] emails in secrecy and gives records custodians power to deny access to many documents.” This comes after state lawmakers pulled a similar bill from a vote.

FOIA Finds

• FDA investigation into product that claims to be “the world’s first alcohol detoxifier”: The Food and Drug Administration opened up a new investigation against Safety Shot, called the “world’s first beverage to reduce blood alcohol content and boost clarity quickly,” according to the company. Hunterbrook Media and journalist Eve Peyser obtained the complaint through a Freedom of Information Act request and is available on DocumentCloud.

• A look into Mayor Eric Adams disciplinary charge: New York-based newsroom Hell Gate has obtained Mayor Eric Adams’ disciplinary charge when he was captain in the New York Police Department and uploaded the charge to DocumentCloud. Adams was found guilty for “speaking in his capacity as an NYPD officer without getting the department’s permission,” reports Christopher Robbins and Sammy Sussman in Hell Gate. In collaboration with MuckRock, Sussman worked on releasing disciplinary files of New York’s “peace officers” in the city’s homeless shelters.

• Requesting agency’s guidance on ChatGPT use: MuckRock user Robby Delaware submitted a request on MuckRock to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for the agency’s guidelines on use of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While most of the documents that were sent back were redacted, there were plenty of cute dog photos.

• Public records reveal how “forever chemicals” were leaked into North Carolina river: After a legal battle with North Carolina’s environmental protection agency, WHQR, with help from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, obtained documents that revealed that the agency did not hold a chemical manufacturer accountable for missing a deadline to prevent “forever chemicals” from leaking into a local river, reports Kelly Kenoyer at WHQR.